Pope John Paul II told American Catholic
cardinals of his concern for the "suffering" and "great harm" to
children caused by priests: "The abuse which has caused this crisis is
by every standard wrong and rightly considered a crime by society; it is
also an appalling sin in the eyes of God...People need to know that
there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who
would harm the young."

He was equally alarmed by the undeniable fact
that "The church herself is viewed with distrust, and many are offended
at the way in which the church's leaders are perceived to have acted in
this matter."

However, U.S. cardinals focused only on what
should be done about errant priests. They totally sidestepped the issue
of how to discipline the hierarchy. Unfortunately, the Pope did not ask
for the resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law.

On the second day of their meetings at the
Vatican, The Boston Globe published a column by William Bennett, a
former Secretary of Education, who is Catholic, calling for Law's
resignation. Law apologized to the cardinals for having initiated the
scandal roiling the church, largely for the way he handed the case of
John Geoghan, who's now in prison.

Some 800 pages of documents surfaced recently
about his handling of another priest, Paul Shanley, whose sexual abuse
charges hark back to the 1960s. Astonishingly, Shanley asserted in 1977
that "the adult is not the seducer -- the `kid' is the seducer and
further, the kid is not "traumatized by the act per se. The kid is
traumatized when the police question" him.

That is not how Greg Ford experienced Shanley.
His father, Rodney Ford, wondered why Greg, who had been a happy young
boy, changed so dramatically as an adolescent that he was in and out of
17 different psychiatric institutions. He tried to kill himself. When
news broke recently about Shanley, who had been their parish priest, he
showed Greg, now 24, a picture of himself and the priest at the boy's
First Communion.

The young man "collapsed on the floor and
started crying," said Rodney. Over the next few days the story slowly
came out that when Greg arrived at religion class, Shanley took him off,
first teaching him to play strip poker, and then repeatedly molested
him. "He abused my son, raping him," Rodney charged.

Shanley even helped organize the North
American Man-Boy Association in 1979. Yet Law promoted Shanley to pastor
of a Newton church, and recommended him as a priest to a California
diocese in 1990 where he opened a motel catering to gays! Law later
endorsed his running a Catholic hotel in New York despite three decades
of sexual abuse allegations.

Should such a bishop "continue to serve as
head of one of the nation's most prominent bishoprics?" asked Bennett.
"In a word, no. The moral credibility of the church is compromised by
leaders whose own credibility is so severely damaged."

Yet the cardinals did not urge the Pope to ask
for Law's resignation. Why? Many of them had knowingly transferred
priests accused of molestation from one church to another.

Instead they debated whether the U.S. policy
for priests should be "one strike and you're out." They agreed to ask
for a special process to defrock any priest who has become "notorious
and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors." In cases
that are "not notorious," they suggested leaving it up to the local
bishop.

However, Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of
America's bishops, said "There is a growing consensus certainly among
the faithful, among the bishops, that it is too great a risk to assign a
priest who has abused a child to another ministry."

David Clohessy, director of SNAP (Survivor's
Network of those Abused by Priests) sighs, "The bishops still want to
play umpire. That is a call that needs to be done by prosecutors. This
is not a ball game. These are real crimes, and real professionals need
to make the call."

A woman wrote me, "I was tortured, pained,
suffering, angry, hurt by a priest 17 years ago...Tell me where to go to
report this..cruel torture."